January Fortnightly~ I put a spell on you- EXTENDED DEADLINE ~RESULTS~

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

She wasn’t a talented witch. Despite her parentage, she had no bent for Defence Against the Dark Arts, and her Transfiguration skills made her professor tap his feet in irritation. Given her surname, the staff at Hogwarts expected talent at something, but Lily Luna Potter failed dismally to live up to their expectations.

Charms was her favourite subject. In that class, she managed to forget her nerves and cast perfect Levitation spells on soft feathers, watching as they flicked through the air, wafting towards the window.

If she raised her wand now, she could Summon them. All three feathers would stop drifting and fly straight back to her hand. She could do that because she was a witch and she had a certain skill.

If only people could return, she thought.

The Summoning Spell. But it worked on objects and not people, she’d always been told. Even knowing that, Lily pointed her wand at a ladybird crawling on her window ledge and whispered the spell. It froze then flew backwards and knocked into her hand. As it crawled up her thumb she examined it carefully for signs of damage, but there were none.

The door to the common room opened and Hugo stepped inside. He was laughing with his friend but stopped suddenly when he saw her and looked shamefaced. With no compunction, Lily raised her wand. “Accio Hugo!” she cried, waiting to see what would happen.

Did he move at all? She thought she saw him jerk, but perhaps that was surprise because she’d shouted his name. Hugo’s friend burst into another fit of laughter, wiping tears from his eyes over her stupidity. With as much dignity as she could muster, Lily left them and stormed out of the castle.

She walked through the grounds, walked under the cold evening sky until her feet hurt and she could feel a frost tearing at her lungs. She walked until she reached the outskirts of Hogwarts, but she still felt sad and dumb and alone.

A sob caught her throat. There was only one person who could help, but clearly she couldn’t Summon him, and a message by Patronus was beyond her. Yet if he knew she was feeling this way, then he’d Apparate straight to her, she knew that much.

She creased her brow in concentration and focused clearly on his image.

“Accio Apparato Scorpius,” she whispered.

But nothing happened.

She watched the empty air before her and then the sob became a full-fledged cry.

“Hey, hey, what’s the matter?” His voice was soft and warm and full of concern.

“Scorpius, is that you?” She peered through the dark, but all she could see was a blurred golden outline.

“Uh, not sure really,” he replied, and laughed a little. “I don’t appear to be actually here, but... um... What have you done?”

It was raining. The Slytherins and Ravenclaws were adjusting hoods and securing book bags in preparation for the trek back to their dormitories. They began filing out of the greenhouse, but a hand landed on Jameson’s shoulder.

“Not so fast, Mr Fox. My office.”

Jameson suppressed a groan.

Professor Longbottom’s office was not tidy, but neither was it messy. The professor sank into the chair behind his desk and gestured at the chair before it.

Jameson sat.

They both waited.

Rain tapped at the skylight in the ceiling.

They both waited.

The chirping began, a high keening that made one’s ears throb and eyes tear. Jameson kept his face perfectly blank.

“If you would kindly undo that charm, Mr Fox, I will refrain from setting you detention during this weekend’s Quidditch match,” Professor Longbottom said evenly.

Jameson looked innocently at the professor. The professor raised an eyebrow. The chirping continued.

Professor Longbottom sighed, lowering his face into his palm. “If I admit you win this round, will you just make it stop?”

Jameson smirked and drew his wand, whispering an incantation as he swept it to encompass every corner of the ceiling.

The chirping ceased. Professor Longbottom let out a long exhalation of relief.

“How did you know it was me, sir?” Jameson asked as he stowed his wand away.

“It changed where it seemed to be coming from every Tuesday and Thursday at exactly the time you would be passing my office,” Professor Longbottom replied. “That, and no other student has proven to be so devoted to making my life hell.”

Jameson grinned cheekily. Professor Longbottom laughed.

“You may go. As a completely unrelated aside, I have a friend who is very interested in speaking with you. Something about an infuriatingly annoying charm you have apparently invented that even he couldn’t dispel. His name is George Weasley.”

Name: Free_Elf/BecHouse: HufflepuffTitle: To ProtectWord Count: 493Ratings/Warnings: 1st-2nd Years, noneA/N: The spell is, of course, piertotum locomotor which McGonagall knew through her times assuming headship in Dumbledore's forced absences and performed after Snape's abdication, according to my personal interpretation

Sit down. Come closer. Let me tell you a story.

Of course, about Hogwarts. Donít they make the best stories?

Now, Iím sure youíve heard that Hogwarts is one of the safest places in the world, thanks to Albus Dumbledore. But heís not the only one who has worked to protect Hogwarts. The Four Founders were the very first to weave spells to safeguard the school.

Why? Well, back then, more Muggles knew about magic. They couldnít understand it, and that led to fear, and then that fear led to hatred. Some Muggles tried to hunt down those who could perform magic, to kill them. So the Founders worked to protect the school from the hatred of Muggles and wicked witches and wizards, so their students could study in safety.

There were only the four of them, so the Founders thought they may need extra fighters but they couldnít rely on other witches and wizards to arrive fast enough in an emergency. So they decided to use animation spells to create fighters out of stone, which was, naturally, plentiful in the castle.

No matter how many clever spells the Founders used, using the stone didnít work well. They had to first turn the stone into a form which could use a weapon, and that weakened their animated fighters. They could only withstand a few spells before turning back into plain stone, and it was complicated and time consuming to make new ones.

The Founders thought more. If they animated something that could already hold a weapon, their fighters would be simpler to make and stronger in a battle. So they turned to the statues and suits of armour that decorated the schoolís corridors. And they were right. The Founders now had the fighters they needed to keep the castle secure.

A new problem then presented itself. The Founders didnít want their fighters animated all the time; it disrupted the studentsí study. They needed a way for the fighters to be ordinary statues and suits of armour until they were needed in battle, when a quick spell would reanimate them. But no such spell existed.

The Founders, over many months, invented a new spell to do just that. It was difficult, and took the efforts of all four working together to craft. I doubt anyone else could ever recreate the spell.

Donít worry, that doesnít mean the fighters canít be used anymore! Itís just that nobody can make any new ones. The Founders set it up so that so that any Headmaster that followed them could speak an incantation and the fighters would awaken.

It really is an incredible spell. No, I know you havenít heard of it. Thatís the most amazing part. The Founders knew that for their fighters to be most effective, they needed to be a complete surprise. So they kept their spell secret. Only the Headmasters of Hogwarts know about it.

Name: MinnaHouse: HufflepuffTitle: Helena's GardenWord Count: 500Ratings/Warnings: 1st-2nd, character deathA/N: The words "hortio Helenae" translate, I am pretty sure, to "Helena's garden." If I have fudged the Latin for "garden," then that is probably for the best since spells are rarely actual Latin.

Rowena can live for days at a time in a haze of pure magic – eating little, sleeping less, dazzled by dizzying heights of possibility. She rarely creates spells. Her work cannot be duplicated; cannot, sometimes, even be documented. She is a craftswoman; she manipulates eddies of magic that none but the highly disciplined can accurately sense. Even by the standards of such as she, she is a marvel. The things she creates do not merely work; they seem to come to life, almost sentient.

But then Helena leaves, and the joy is snuffed right out. Helena gone, and the diadem with her. Has Rowena truly been so caught up in her own cleverness that she has not seen that her daughter wishes to share in it? She has failed Helena, gravely and unforgivably. She has never been able to show anyone her methods – it is as much intuition as discipline, not learned so much as discovered for oneself – but she wonders if, had she passed down spells, things that Helena could do for herself, her daughter would have felt less cheated. She waits and waits, chewing these thoughts over, until finally she decides to try her hand at creating a spell. Helena’s spell. A final message, should Helena not return until Rowena has trundled off this earth.

She must find the framework: the wand movement that will lend itself best to the desired effect, words that will bring it to life, combined with proper will. It is harder than she had imagined. How to condense what is usually hours upon hours of prodding and twisting just so into a single word, or two if she is feeling verbose? The process must be made logical, reproducible – the pattern firmly laid down so that others may conjure it at will.

Finally, after days and weeks shut away in her rooms, the pieces of the spell settle into a pattern with a click. She knows, in her teeth, in her bones, in every sinew of her body, that this is now a spell rather than one of Rowena’s enchantments.

Helena will never see the paper with her spell written on it. She will die before she has a chance to return to Hogwarts. Not long after, Rowena will follow, and their quarrel will be settled in the land beyond death.

Helena’s spell will be lost to history, but in a little village in Aberdeenshire, there is a family who will make it a tradition to teach their children to say the words Hortio Helenae and wish very hard. Once a year, the youngest of-age wizard among them will cast the spell, and a fabulous garden will spring up around them, illusory but vivid. They will gather close, and look very hard, and perhaps they will see a glimpse of a dark-haired woman and her bright-eyed young daughter beyond the rosebushes. They will watch till it fades, reveling in the idyllic scene. And somewhere in that garden, Helena Ravenclaw loves her mother very much.

Name: the opaleyeHouse: SlytherinTitle: InfiniteWord Count: 362Ratings/Warnings: 3rd-5th years; Sexual situations, character death, implied violence.A/N:Avada Kedavra is Aramaic for 'let this thing be destroyed'. Hadadezer and Hazael were both Aramaen kings of the kingdom of Aram Damascus during the ninth century BC. It is said that Hazael smothered Hadadezer to death in order to succeed him as king. I imagine the Killing Curse would have travelled to Europe and Britain during the Middle Ages when it is said that witches and wizards began to use it in duels according to The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

He stands above the sleeping king and smiles. Hadadezer does not stir and neither do the naked women beside him. Hazael’s lips shift into a sneer, a scar of pure hatred ripping through his features as sudden and as harsh as the desert storms of Bagdana. This King, this mortal man, must die.

And Hazael will take his rightful place.

He can feel the life pounding beneath his skin and he stifles a laugh at the thought. He feels deathless, he feels infinite. And the most powerful man in all of Aram Damascus lies before him, fragile and impotent with his weak blood. He holds no ancient secret, he does not have Hazael’s one strength surging through his veins.

The blood of true Kings. The blood of magic.

It is magic that Hazael will empower on this night of nights, this hour of all hours. He has spent so long working on this moment, focusing all of his thoughts, all of his ambition into two words, like one swipe of the tongue of the ruthless cobra.

Let this King be destroyed.

Hazael slips his hand beneath his robes and extracts a long, wooden wand, thin spirals of gold weaving around the shaft from base to tip. This is his most precious possession, handed down from father to son along with the ancient secret he has held since his tenth winter. That familiar warmth of power thrums through his fingers as if his hand and the wand are one. The incantation will work. He knows it will. He can feel it in his blood.

One day, Hazael thinks, he will pass on the secrets of this new curse to his own son, and the legacy will live on. Indestructible men. Deathless. Infinite.

He thinks of the sleeping king, the weak and pathetic man who does not deserve such noble position, does not deserve to rule over men like Hazael. He thinks of his father, pale and cold and emptied of his beautiful blood at the hands of Hadadezer’s men. He thinks of red, and of rage, and of revenge.